JANUARY 2015 UKRAINE ON THE BRINK: “THE GUILTY BLAMING THE INNOCENT” By John R. Haines John R. Haines is a Senior Fellow and Trustee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and directs the Princeton Committee of FPRI. Much of his current research is focused on Russia and its near abroad, with a special interest in nationalist and separatist movements. He is also the chief executive officer of a private sector corporation that develops nuclear detection and nuclear counterterrorism technologies. The author is responsible for the translation of all source material unless noted otherwise. "[A]rmed struggle...is conducted by individuals and by small groups. [...] It pursues two different aims...in the first place, the struggle aims at assassinating individuals, chiefs and subordinates in the army and police..." "The old Russian terrorism was an affair of the intellectual conspirator; today as a general rule guerrilla warfare is waged by the worker combatant, or simply by the unemployed worker..." Vladimir Lenin (1906) Guerrilla Warfare "The potential for guerrilla conflict in Ukraine is very high," says Rostislav Ishchenko1 in a troubling account published on the Russian news portal Versiya ("Version").2 A few days earlier, Ishchenko published another commentary "After New Russia" on the Russian portal Aktual'nyye kommentarii ("Urgent Commentaries").3 He depicts a Ukraine at the brink, facing "growing anarchy and the real threat" that electric power generation will collapse, causing the nation's "life support systems" — "electricity, gas, heat, sewer, water and other small pleasures that make life acceptable" — to collapse as well. He sees Ukraine driven by the United States "to escalate the conflict" in Donetsk and Lugansk "even if it risks a rapid defeat of Kyev’s forces." If pro-Russian separatist militias respond in kind by mounting an offensive, Russia would be blamed, hardening the stance of the United States and European Union. Alternately, Ukraine's armed forces might buckle in the face of determined resistance, forcing President Poroshenko to call for an international peacekeeping force to restore order in eastern Ukraine. Or, Ishchenko speculates, the political infighting in Kyev could provoke a putsch by Right Sector's Ukrainian Volunteer Corps,4 and in the resulting chaos, an "The Guilty Blaming the Innocent" is the title of a 1905 essay by Lenin published in Vperyod ("Forward"), at the time the official organ of the Russian Social- Democratic Labor Party that was ancestral to the Soviet Communist Party. 1 Rostislav Ishchenko is usually identified as president of the Center for Systems [sometimes appearing as "System-based" or "Systematic"] Analysis and Forecasting. The Center's location is identified in published reports at Kyev, Ukraine, although Ishchenko is described in one profile as "forced to live in Moscow." [http://en.cyplive.com/ru/news/rostislav-ischenko-soedinennye-shtaty-na-ukraine-uzhe-proigrali.html. Last accessed 19 January 2015] His commentary is notably pro- Russian — in a January 2014 interview with the online news portal The Mirror of Crimea, Ishchenko opined that "Russia has done all that is possible and even more" and "Ukraine will be turned into an anti-Russian battering ram." [see: http://zerkalokryma.ru/lenta/people/interview/rossiya_sdelala_vso_chto_mozhno_i_dazhe_bol_she/] He is quoted approvingly in the semi-official Russian media on matters related to Ukraine, and is a contributor to Rossiya Segodnya ("Russia Today"), a Moscow-based news agency established upon the December 2013 liquidation of RIA Novosti by decree of President Putin. 2 "Вышли из леса" ("Out of the woods"). Versia.ru [online Russian edition, 19 January 2015]. http://versia.ru/articles/2015/jan/19/vyshli_iz_lesa. Last accessed 20 January 2015. 3 "New Russia" or Novorossiya is the name of the proposed confederation between eastern Ukraine's self-declared Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic, respectively. "После Новороссии." Актуальные комментарии [online Russian edition, 14 January 2015]. http://actualcomment.ru/posle-novorossii.html. Last accessed 19 January 2015. "Urgent Commentaries" is an improved translation of the portal's name on its web address, where it appears as "Actual Comment" (actualcomment.ru). 4 The Ukrainian Volunteer Corps is a paramilitary organization established in April 2014 by Ukraine's Right Sector [Ukrainian: Правий сектор. Ukrainian transl.: Pravy Sektor], a political party organized in November 2013 as a union of several far-right nationalist movements. The Ukrainian Volunteer Corps is sometimes referred to as "DUK Right Sector" for its acronym in Ukrainian, Dobrovolʹ chyy Ukrayinsʹ kyy korpus. Right Sector claims the UVC/DUK Right Sector is formally international peacekeeping force would have to enter the country to restore order. Ishchenko is hopeful, if not optimistic, that Russia might derail what he sees as the United States' plan for Ukraine, with the most likely scenario being that civil conflict emerges elsewhere in the country in a determined effort to draw Ukraine's armed forces away from eastern Ukraine. "Perhaps the Russian government will be able to roll back United States relations with the European Union and at the last minute save Russia's head, which has already been thrust into Europe's noose. Russia may be able to force Ukrainian armed forces to redeploy from New Russia, especially if the combat readiness of the Odessa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya undergrounds are even half of what is claimed." Ishchenko elaborates on these underground units' combat readiness in the Versiya article, claiming pro-Russian groups have ten thousand shtykov ("bayonets") in the Odessa region, twelve to fifteen thousand in Kharkov, and at least five thousand in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya. Calling them narodnych mstitieliej 5 or "people's avengers," Ishchenko claims many are former Ukrainian soldiers or police officers, some of whom were fired after refusing to take part in anti-terrorist operations in eastern Ukraine. "Regularly nowadays in Ukraine, freight trains loaded with supplies for so-called "anti-terrorist operations" explode, buildings blow up in which the ultra-nationalists are meeting, and for quite some time now local officials and warlords who risk going home simply vanish. So the guerrilla war is going full throttle. It has not claimed many victims so far, which gives the Kyev authorities grounds to claim that that extent of the problem is being inflated. Meanwhile, the number of arson attacks and bombings continue to grow. Law enforcement agencies apparently can no longer cope, and the other day Odessa was forced to bring in National Guard forces to put an end somehow to vigilantism there."6 By some estimates the number and severity of these incidents are increasing. As to whether "buildings blow up," Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council on 19 January blamed Russia for a recent explosion in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city: "The Russian Federation continues its war against Ukraine as well as acts of terrorism committed on our territory. In particular, the explosion in Kharkiv during which 13 people were injured, 6 of them seriously, is another example of sabotage by the Russian Federation directed against civilians."7 Similar incidents have occurred in Odessa, Mariupol and Kyev. As to Ishchenko's exploding freight trains, on 20 January an device thought to be a mine destroyed a railway bridge near Kuhnetsovka on the border of the Zaporizhia and Donetsk regions. It derailed a freight train and closed the rail line between Kamysh-Zarya and Rozovka, severing rail access to the port of Mariupol, where separatist units were advancing from the east. The SBU responded by extending "counter-terrorism measures" to the Zaporizhia region. Some believe Russia is targeting the area south and east of an arc extending from Kharkiv — "a critical industrial and communication node" in the country's northeast — to Odessa — "the freight gateway to Ukraine and the corridor to Transdniestria" — while it encourages separatists to engage in diversionary acts of sabotage in such Ukrainian cities as Kyev, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev, and Kherson.8 Ishchenko's warning in Versiya comes only weeks after a Ukrainian weekly, Tyzhdenʹ ("The Week"), published an interview with Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Levus. He claimed Ukraine was responding in-kind, with pro-government partisans operating behind separatist lines in the Donbass; and more ominously, with acts of sabotage "on the territory of the Russian Federation."9 Levus is certainly in a position to speak with authority: a member of the national parliament representing the Popular Front10 party of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Levus is the former deputy chief of Ukraine's internal security agency, the SBU.11 During the Maidan uprising against the Yanukovych government, he was the deputy head of "self-defense" forces, an umbrella group of anti-government paramilitaries.12 Asked by Tyzhdenʹ whether Ukraine conducts "sabotage operations, similar to what Russia is doing," 13 Levus answered, "Often our citizens have opportunities in enemy territory. However, we don't issue press releases or leave Yarosh's business card." The reference is to Dmytro Yarosh, the DUK Right Sector14 leader, and to Russian claims that his business card (vizytku Yarosha) was discovered at the scene of an April independent in deference to a legal prohibition against political parties maintaining paramilitary forces.